Message to the Congress Transmitting the Annual Manpower Report of the President.

To the Congress of the United States:

It is with great pride that I submit this, the final Manpower Report of my Presidency. It describes the most favorable employment record in many years and the policies and programs that have made this progress possible. It also sets forth the agenda for further improvements in the use of the Nation's manpower and for continued economic prosperity.

This Report records the Nation's ability and continuing progress to meet one of the most basic needs of its people and represents a valid gauge of the Nation's essential strength.

The overriding significance of the Report is found in its concern for people, the most precious resource of this Nation--teenagers with futures to build, men and women with families to feed and house and educate, elderly citizens with productive years still ahead.

I commend this Report to your careful attention as the profile of America at work today. It is a record of promises made, of achievements and of hopes aroused. A new sense of dignity, a new chance for fulfillment, a new vision of the future have touched the lives of many millions because of what these pages tell.

Although there is ample cause for satisfaction in this Report, there is none for complacency. What we have accomplished helps to describe the dimensions of what is still undone. But those achievements, incomplete as they are, also serve to show us what can be done.

With a strong economy as the lifeline, special manpower programs--those we have tried and those still to be tested in the years ahead--can help men and women whom the economy would otherwise by-pass.

The road we are on is a long one. But the milestones we have already passed tell us it is the right road.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON

The White House

January 19, 1969